Inseparable

A scholarship allows medical students to experience how medicine and art are inextricably intertwined

Life as a doctor today can be dominated by numbers: patients in, patients out, community measures, big data. Yet medicine remains both an art and a science.

Such is the belief of Robert O. Fisch, M.D., a retired University of Minnesota professor of pediatrics and Holocaust survivor, who 10 years ago created the Fisch Art of Medicine Student Awards with his wife, Karen Bachman. The purpose: allowing U medical students the means to pursue creative endeavors outside of the Medical School curriculum.

“Living is an art, and medicine is an art form to make life a little better and a little longer,” writes Fisch, an artist himself. “Art and medicine are two consequences of the same desire to sustain life.”